Kincellis Advanced Therapies has appointed Bruce Thompson, Ph.D., as Chief Scientific Officer, where he will lead the company’s technical organization and CMC strategy as the newly merged cell therapy CDMO integrates its teams and capabilities.
As Chief Scientific Officer, Thompson will focus on building scalable CMC strategies for Kincellis’ partners, spanning closed and automated processing, phase-appropriate analytics and potency assay development, to help de-risk client programs from first-in-human studies through commercialization.
In a LinkedIn post announcing the appointment, Thompson said the merger brings together complementary strengths in process development, analytical science and GMP manufacturing, and that he is eager to build a technical team where manufacturing innovation leads to “faster, more reliable access to transformative therapies for patients.” He steps into the role as Kincellis focuses on integrating the two organizations and using its 16-suite manufacturing network to support programs from early development through commercial supply.
About Bruce Thompson
Thompson has spent his career at the intersection of cell therapy science and manufacturing. He was the founding CEO of Kincell Bio, which emerged from stealth in July 2023 with $36 million in funding as a spinout of Inceptor Bio‘s CMC, manufacturing and quality organizations. In January 2026, he was promoted to President and Chief Technology Officer, leading Kincell’s technology strategy and innovation. Before Kincell, he was Vice President and Technical Lead for the Cell Therapy Franchise at Resilience, where he helped build development and GMP manufacturing capabilities. He previously served as Vice President of Process Sciences at Lyell Immunopharma, overseeing process and analytical development and tech transfer to a new cGMP facility, and as Senior Director of the Therapeutic Products Program at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, where he led GMP manufacturing of cell and gene therapy products, supported more than 15 active clinical programs and contributed to six IND filings. Thompson began his career with nearly a decade in Pfizer‘s Pharmaceutical Sciences division, where he built the CMC team that partnered with Servier and Cellectis on the UCART19 allogeneic CAR-T programs. He holds a B.A. in Biology and an M.S. in Biochemistry from The Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Louisville, and he serves as a cell therapy mentor in the Wyss Institute‘s Mentor Hive program.
About Kincellis Advanced Therapies
Kincellis Advanced Therapies is a U.S.-based CDMO that supports advanced-therapy developers from early-stage CMC, process and analytical development through clinical supply, pivotal-stage programs and commercial manufacturing. The company operates roughly 140,000 square feet of development and manufacturing space across three U.S. sites in Gainesville, Florida; Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and The Woodlands, Texas. Darren Head serves as CEO and Larry Pitcher as President, with more than 200 team members across the network. The merger was backed by equity financing led by NewSpring Capital, with participation from existing investors Kineticos Life Sciences, HealthQuest Capital and Great Point Partners.
